


The Mechanisms Fandom: A Study

by justawordwright



Series: The Mechanisms Fandom In Numbers [2]
Category: Fandom - Fandom, The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Fandom Research, Fandom Statistics, Gen, Meta, The Mechanisms Fandom Survey 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justawordwright/pseuds/justawordwright
Summary: The results of the Mechanisms Fandom Survey 2020, tracking fandom recruitment and engagement.
Series: The Mechanisms Fandom In Numbers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118069
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	1. Introduction

It has been relatively clear that the popularity of the Mechanisms has grown significantly over the last two years – with the official social media of the band boasting 2,101 likes of Facebook; 3,635 follows on Twitter; and having 70,557 monthly listens on Spotify – and with it, the online presence of its fandom has grown as well – being the 9th most talked about musical group on Tumblr in 2020, and having approximately 96% of the just over 1400 fanworks on AO3 posted within the last 12 months. I have previously tracked this growth in a small subset of the fandom (fanfic on AO3- see An Analysis of The Posting Habits of Mechanism Fans), and have speculated that this growth is in a large part due to the success of The Magnus Archives, written by form Mechanisms frontman, Jonathan Sims. With the continued – and accelerated – growth of the Mechanisms fandom, I decided it would be valuable to extend and deepen this study to cover the full spread of the fandom.

  
To this end I developed a survey to both document the growth and recruitment methods, but also chart fandom participation and engagement, hoping to provide the tools to support further fandom growth.

  
The survey contained five sections –

  * Fandom Demographics, plus recruitment information
  * Fandom engagement with canon material
  * How fans engage with each other
  * What fan content fans engage with and create
  * Freeform response about general fandom experience



  
It was a long survey, however, the only compulsory questions were the two required to answer the key aims – how quickly the fandom was growing, and what was causing it.

  
The survey ran from November 6th 2020 to January 1st, 2021, and was advertised on Tumblr, Twitter, Discord and YouTube. Five hundred and forty people responded, with the recruitment primarily dominated by responses from those having seen the Tumblr and YouTube posts. However, it is hoped that the survey still gives a reasonable cross-section of the active online fandom.

[Image ID: Bar chart showing where survey respondents saw the survey advertised. Data: Tumblr, 263; Discord, 77; YouTube, 204; Twitter, 7; Friends, 4.]


	2. Fandom Recruitment and Demographics

The first set of questions were designed to tackle the main aim of the survey and answer the question of how quickly the fandom was growing and where this growth was coming from. A secondary aim of the questions of this section was to identify the breadth of the fandom demographics, and whether these were changing with fresh recruitment.

# Q1: Age

Age was the first question, with the allowed answers being: under 18; 18-24; 25-29; 30-34; 35-39; 40-49; and 50+. The question was not mandatory but was answered by all survey respondents, giving 540 answers.

[Image ID: Pie-bar chart of fan ages. Data: <18, 235 (44%); 18-24, 267 (49%); 25-29, 32 (6%); 30-34, 6 (1%)]

It is clear that the current online presence of the fandom skews heavily towards the under 25s. This is interesting as it is highly unrepresentative of the offline listeners of the music – based on the footfall at gigs, the 35+ categories should all have received responses, including the 50+ category. It is likely that this is in part due to generational differences in participation in fandom in online spaces, including the likelihood of participating heavily in the fandom of a non-traditional medium for fandom (i.e. participation in a ‘bandom’ may be less likely for older fans than participation in a tv show fandom).

It is hard to quantify whether the fandom is getting younger with how this question is structured, and with few respondents falling into the ‘introduced to the music prior to 2018’ category, an empirical answer using the survey data is impossible. However, it is likely it is. Recruitment prior to 2018 came predominantly from students and the UK ‘geek’ scene, so the demographic at gigs was largely 20+, and in 2015 was skewed heavily towards the late twenties and above. The predominance of the 18-24 category here means that the recruitment of university age fans has continued. However, fans in the under 18 category are a new phenomenon, and with the loss of the older fans, or their lack of online presence, means that the average age of fans has significantly decreased. 

# Q2: Location

The next two questions asked about location, primarily looking at it on a continental basis, with the option to specify a country to determine the range of the fandom. 539 people gave a continent, and 527 people gave a country.

[Image ID: Pie-bar chart of fan’s locations. Data: N. America, 329 (61%); Europe, 165 (30%); Oceania, 25, 5%); Asia, 10 (2%); S. America, 9 (2%); Africa, 1 (0%)]

The fandom is clearly dominated by North American fans, and then European fans. This is due to the dominance of fans from the USA (53%) and UK (14%), but the full range of fans includes those from 47 separate countries. The number of fans from the UK is unsurprising given the band only ever played in the UK, and the number of fans from the USA is likely indicative of the recruitment of fans from TMA. Interestingly though, there was a slow development of international fans even in the 2013-2015 period due to the online presence of the band and fandom even before the introduction of TMA, and a number of international fans joining in the 2016-2017 period who joined separate from the Magnus Archives, showing that TMA isn't the sole reason for the internationally of the fandom, even if it plays a large part of it. 

# Q3: Recruitment Year

The first question tackling the primary aim of the survey was to track the year when fans were first introduced to the music of The Mechanisms. The options were given as 2010-2012; 2013-2015; 2016-2017; 2018-2019; 2020. This question was mandatory and so received 540 responses.

[Image Id: Pie-bar chart showing when fans were introduced to The Mechanisms. Data: 2010-12, 3 (1%); 2013-15, 6 (1%); 2016-17, 10 (2%); 2018-19, 124 (23%); 2020, 397 (73%)]

It is clear that most fans have joined in the last twelve months, while almost all (96%) were introduced in the last three years. This data matches well with the data on searches for the band on Google and YouTube taken from Google Trends.

[Image Id: Line graph of the number of searches for “The Mechanisms” on Google and YouTube over time, starting from Jan 2016. There are sporadic small isolated spikes from zero in the Google data prior to mid-2017, when YouTube results start, and then more frequent small spikes until the start of 2020 when the searches suddenly increase and are consistently non-zero for the first time, peaking in mid-2020 and then declining.]

[Image Id: Line graph of searches for the 4 studio album titles on YouTube against time, starting Jan 2016. OUAT(IS) sees large initial peaks pre-2018, and TBI has one large peak in 2017 for its release. The peaks for OUAT(IS) are then small and sporadic until 2019 when they increase in frequency, while the other albums have mostly zero results until 2020 when they have a consistent low level set of results.]

[Image Id: Zoomed in version of prior graph, showing only 2018 onwards, when the hits are more frequent. OUAT(IS) shows the most results, with them occurring throughout the three years; TBI has about half the number of hits, but only after 2020, except for a single response in 2018; UDAD and HNOC are slightly less popular than TBI and also almost entirely have hits after 2020, except for two hits for HNOC in 2019.]

(Note that Google Trends updated their data collection and analysis methods in 2017, so the initial large peaks may be an artefact of that).

This growth correlates heavily with the popularity of The Magnus Archives, and given the confirmation that TMA is driving most of the recruitment below, the correlation is unsurprising.

[Image Id: Line graph of searches on Google for The Mechanisms and TMA against time, starting at Jan 2016. TMA slowly picks up hits from 2016, but grows exponentially from 2018, peaking mid-2020. The data for The Mechanisms loosely matches that of TMA, starting more slowly, but having the same large growth at the same time, and peaking at the same time, and declining at the same time.]

As will be also noted below, it is interesting that the large growth in listeners of the band pre-2015 is not picked up. This may be due to the older demographic of these fans as discussed above, or there may have been a lack of retainment of earlier fans. This second theory is highly likely to be contributing, especially given that a large change in authors contributing to the fandom on AO3 pre-2018 and post 2018 can be seen.

# Q4: Recruitment Method

The final set of questions in this section tackled how fans were introduced to the band. This was a pair of questions – the first offered the ability to select several options from being friends with the band; attending a pre-DTTM show; attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; attending DTTM; the steampunk scene; the music folk/filk scene; being in a fandom that was adapted; TMA; some other reason (could be specified); general online chatter; or a specific friend recommendation. In the case of a friend recommendation, how the friend had been introduced to the band was also asked in order to see secondary effects. Of the additional reasons given, several actually fell under the umbrella of one of the suggested reasons and were rolled into the data for these, but one major additional factor was identified – the YouTube and Spotify recommendation algorithms.

[Image Id: Stacked bar chart showing how fans were introduced to the band. Data is given as (person’s introduction), (friend’s introduction), (total), (percentage based on total). Data: Algorithm – 10, 0, 10, 2%; Friend Rec – 148, 12, 160, 30%; Online Chatter – 238, 20, 258, 48%; TMA – 409, 84, 493, 91%; Fandom Adaptation – 18, 11, 29, 5%; Filk/Folk Music – 34, 12, 46, 9%; Steampunk – 36, 8, 44, 8%; Edinburgh Fringe – 3, 3, 6, 1%; DTTM – 24, 5, 29, 5%; pre-DTTM English shows – 4, 4, 8, 1%; Friends with the band – 7, 8, 3%. Note 66 people who had been recommended the band by a friend didn’t know where their friend had heard about the band.]

Clearly The Magnus Archives has been driving most of the explosion of the fandom, validating the initial hypothesis that it was. Interestingly, the pre-2017 live shows (both in England and in Edinburgh) which became very popular have not contributed much to the current fandom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first block of data from the survey! There's a lot of it, and it's taking a little more time to process than I expected, so I'll be trying to release a chunk every week or two, plus there's a new version of the fanfic survey coming to aid in some comparison stuff.


End file.
